Christie: Let's talk about guns

Chris Christie says gun control should be part of a "national conversation about what we're willing to give up to make ourselves safer and our children safer" post-Newtown.

During an appearance on NJ 101.5 radio's "Ask the Governor" Wednesday, Christie - a former U.S. Attorney - put firearms on the table along with mental health treatment and portrayals of violence in computer games and other entertainment media.

"I think we need to have a large, national discussion and gun control has to be part of it too…but anyone who thinks fixing any one of those things solves the problem is kidding themselves – I believe it's a continuum of all those things," the Republican governor said.

Meanwhile, others in his party seem more interested in taking guns off the table.

In a Huffington Post interview, former House Speaker/failed GOP presidential candidate Newt Gingrich mustered a bunch of musty arguments against gun regulations (perhaps best summed up as, 'they don't work perfectly in all cases, so why bother').

But the never-dull Gingrich also grabbed a headline or two by suggesting that school administrators packing heat could have prevented the mass slaughter at Sandy Hook Elementary.

And in National Review Online, the writer Charlotte Allen likewise theorized about the purported need for more (!) "male aggression" in the supposedly "feminized" milieu of public education.

Seems the big national conversation is well under way.